Here's a press release from the ADL:
MOCK TRIAL ASSOCIATION RELENTS:
JEWISH SCHOOL WINS FULL PARTICIPATION IN COMPETITION
May 7, 2009 Atlanta, Ga…The National High School Mock Trial Association now says it will alter its schedule to allow a Jewish High School to fully participate in the national mock trial competition, which will be held in Atlanta starting tonight.
The Anti-Defamation League intervened when students of Maimonides High School of Brookline, Mass. were told they would have to participate in trial rounds scheduled for Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, or forfeit the opportunity to become national champions. Observant Jews are forbidden to work or to engage in many other activities on Shabbat.
“We made a simple request of the mock trial association: alter the schedule to allow Maimonides a fair opportunity to compete, and do not punish them for their religious convictions,” said Bill Nigut, Southeast Regional Director of ADL. “We are thrilled that the students now have that opportunity.”
ADL Southeast Regional Board Chair Elizabeth Price praised Judge Doris Downs, Chief Judge of Fulton County Superior Courts, who told the mock trial association they could not hold the competition in Fulton County courts if all schools could not fully participate.
“Georgia is fortunate to have courageous and thoughtful judges such as Judge Downs, who refused to allow the state courthouse to be used unless the Maimonides team was accommodated,” Ms. Price said.
Ms. Price also praised Fulton State Court Judge Diane Bessen who withdrew from judging the competition rather than see the Maimonides students excluded. “When brave and fair minded people stand up to discrimination, they can change the world a little at a time,” Ms. Price said. “And what better lesson to teach our children than this?”
When the Georgia State Bar, which is the local host for the competition, refused to support accommodation for the Maimonides students, Ms. Price tendered her resignation as a member of the Bar’s board of governors.
Bill Nigut said that while ADL welcomes the last-minute decision on Maimonides, the organization will write to the mock trail association and next year’s host committee to encourage them to ensure that this problem does not happen again.
Parade Or Disruption?
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In its wisdom, the township has decided to disenfranchise a large part of
the community by insisting on holding the Independence Day Parade on the
morning...
4 months ago
13 comments:
Who cares? We have much larger issues at hand in Teaneck right now...
This likely means that New Jersey will re-join the NHSMTC and strong Teaneck schools, like TABC, will be able to compete again for the national championship.
Way to go Maimonides.
Maimonides students are WAY ABOVE TABC students. TABC students are taught to "take the easy way out, strive for an easy 9-5 job and go to a lower academic college as long as they can be a "guy" and love sports they are a good Jew. They'll get creamed by the other competition. They looked awful and ignorant on that cable TV show.
Maimonides students are taught to reach for the sky, strive for the Iveys, and they get a lot of academic scholarships to be able to attend the best colleges. Living up there for years I remembered when The Rav encouraged this. I don't care if Adler is the Rav's student. He strives for mediocraty.
the two schools are in completely different leagues.
All's well that ends well, I suppose. Good luck to all of em.
Just for the record,Anon 2:32, TABC graduates currently study at MIT, Columbia, The University of Pennsylvania, Princeton,Cooper Union,Brandeis, NYU, and many other top universities. I guess you didn't go to an Ivy League school, Anon, because you can't seem to spell "Ivy's". Most of these students also spent at least one year studying at the best yeshivot (schools of higher Jewish study) in Israel, including Yeshivat Har Etzion, Shalavim, and Kerem B'Yavneh. TABC also actually cares about educating kids who will never be Ivy League material--so sports and being a "mensch" are important as well. Sounds like you have it in for "Adler," but you should get your facts straight about the school. It's a school that believes in educating ALL kinds of learners.
Too many people on this blog are so quick to slander our local schools, both public and private. Your misinformation can only be harmful.
oh, and I'm sorry your own mediocrity has left you unable to spell that word too.
Anyone who knows anything about TABC's mock trial team knows that it has been a standout school for ten years. In fact, it was TABC's performance in 1999 (when it came in third in New Jersey) that led the New Jersey bar to start asking national mock trial for an accommodation.
More importantly, the TABC students were a true kiddush hashem in the way they comported themselves in North Carolina in 2005. Let's hope the Maimonides kids can match that.
Maimonides is a coed school, while TABC is boys only.
I'm surprised nobody pointed out that TABC must therefore discriminate against women.
Religious Accommodation Dispute Over Mock Trial Schedule Resolved
R. Robin McDonald, Fulton County Daily Report
On Friday May 8, 2009, 3:02 am EDT
Fulton County, Ga., Chief Judge Doris L. Downs stepped in Wednesday evening and unilaterally resolved an increasingly bitter dispute over the national high school mock trial competition that has prompted a resignation from the State Bar Board of Governors, caused a Georgia Supreme Court justice and a Fulton County State Court judge to withdraw their participation in the event and drawn the attention of the Department of Justice, while tainting the event with allegations of religious discrimination.
The National High School Mock Trial Championship's board reluctantly agreed to alter a computer-generated mock trial schedule to accommodate the religious observance of the Saturday Sabbath by the Maimonides School team of Brookline, Mass., whose members are Orthodox Jews, after Downs on Wednesday night notified the board that she would withdraw permission to use the Fulton County Courthouse if the board did not ensure that the team could participate fully in the event and honor their Sabbath obligations, which forbid them from engaging in any scheduled mock trial matches on Saturday.
Fulton courtrooms had been set aside on Friday and Saturday for an estimated 100 mock trials by 42 high school teams from across the nation, the U.S. territories and South Korea that are competing in the national event, which is hosted by the State Bar of Georgia.
The dispute over whether the Massachusetts team would have to forfeit matches because of their Sabbath observance caused the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, Leah Ward Sears, to quietly withdraw on Sunday as a mock trial judge in Saturday's scheduled finals. On Wednesday, Fulton County State Court Judge Diane Bessen also withdrew as a competition judge in protest, and Alston & Bird partner Elizabeth A. Price resigned from the State Bar's Board of Governors in response to the Bar's handling of the event.
As a result of the mock trial board's initial decision not to accommodate the Massachusetts team's observance of the Saturday Sabbath, Sears "did make the decision Sunday not to participate in the mock trial," said Jane Hansen, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. Hansen confirmed that Sears had made no public statement of her withdrawal and "doesn't want to say" why she did not make her decision public.
After withdrawing, Sears subsequently made personal plans and will stick with her decision not to participate, although Hansen said the chief justice is "very pleased" that the controversy has been resolved.
Downs' threat to bar the event from the Fulton County Courthouse prompted the mock trial board Wednesday night to agree to alter the competition schedule so that the Massachusetts team may participate fully in the championships. The board's membership includes Georgia Supreme Court Justice George H. Carley and State Bar staff member Stacy Rieke. Both Carley and Rieke have referred all questions about the controversy to board chairman John Wheeler, who runs the Iowa State Bar Association's Center for Law and Civic Education.
In an interview Thursday with the Fulton County Daily Report, Downs said that she did not learn until Wednesday that the mock trial board had refused to accommodate the religious observances of the Massachusetts team. She also learned Wednesday that attorneys for the team had filed a discrimination complaint with the Justice Department's civil rights office and that Justice had responded with a letter to state court authorities threatening an investigation if any recipient of federal funds among the participating judiciary was found to have discriminated against the Massachusetts team.
The chief judge said that once she learned of the growing controversy, she placed calls to Carley and Jeffrey O. Bramlett, president of the State Bar of Georgia.
Bramlett, a partner with Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, had previously taken the position that the State Bar was powerless to force any schedule changes by the terms of the Bar's contract with the mock trial board. Carley this week referred all questions about the board's position to Wheeler. But last month, he told the Blog of the Legal Times, a Fulton County Daily Report affiliate, "We're not discriminating against anyone. It's just our schedule."
Downs said that after speaking with Carley and Bramlett "My understanding ... was that the only group that could make a decision [to accommodate the Massachusetts team] was the board," Downs said. "When I realized that no one could deal with it but the board and that it appeared the board was not going to deal with the problem, then I made my decision, and I'm thrilled that the board was able to change their position so that we could host it.
"When I found out no one else could do anything, then I acted."
Downs, who will be one of the mock trial competition's judges on Saturday, said that she absolutely would have barred the event from using the courthouse if the board had not capitulated.
"I don't have any reason to believe [the board] would ever, ever intend to discriminate," she said. "I believe they would not." But, she continued, "What I think is that it's not fair for a team that wins its state title not to be able to compete. Whether it's legal or not legal is not something I'm willing to make a determination on. It's a matter of fundamental fairness to a team that won their state championship. ... This is a competition involving high school students, and we want to teach them not only how to work hard and compete fairly but also how to respect each other."
Downs said she also acted because, "This national competition should be about the students. It looks like we have become focused on an issue which is going to undermine the true nature of these competitions. I'm for getting it back on track. That's why I think it was a no-brainer. ... This program is amazing nationwide, and students who win their states' competitions work for months to get there ... and we need to start celebrating the hard work and the efforts of these students and set a good example for them and welcome them to our state, which is what I want to do and our court wants to do."
On Thursday, national board chairman Wheeler could not be reached for comment. But Wheeler apparently felt the board was bullied into making the schedule change. In a statement Wheeler released Wednesday night, he said, "Unfortunately, the board is now faced with the prospect that this year's national championship will be cancelled unless it agrees to alter the competition schedule. A decision was made by the Fulton County Superior Court Administrator's office and the Fulton County attorney's office that unless an accommodation allowing the Massachusetts team to fully participate was granted, then the Fulton County Courthouse facilities would no longer be available to Mock Trial.
"Although no legal precedent exists to force this accommodation," the statement continued, "the board, in order to ensure that all 42 teams that have prepared for the National Championship are able to compete, the board has voted to alter the competition schedule."
He added, the board "firmly believes that it has not discriminated against any group nor done anything in violation of any section of the [federal] civil rights laws. On the contrary, all actions have been religiously neutral as we live in a country of many faiths and it is not always possible to accommodate everyone."
The board's decision to reverse its earlier stance required that the mock trial competitive matches begin Thursday evening rather than Friday, with the Massachusetts team as one of the first participants. "Other scheduling changes also will be made to allow for complete participation by the Massachusetts team," the board statement said.
Bramlett could not be reached for comment Thursday. In a letter to the Fulton County Daily Report that was published Tuesday, Bramlett said the State Bar's contract with the national mock trial board gave it "no legal basis" to compel it to make the scheduling changes required to accommodate the Massachusetts team and that it faced "onerous financial penalties" if it attempted to cancel the event.
Bramlett also had expressed his personal hope that "an accommodation acceptable to all could be reached."
On Thursday, Price -- who also is chair of the Southeast Region of the Anti-Defamation League -- said that Bramlett's position prompted her resignation from the Bar's governing board.
"I felt very strongly that the Bar needed to put pressure on the national mock trial group to act fairly," she said Thursday. "I didn't see it as a legal question. I saw it as a question of what was fair and right under these circumstances."
Price also praised Downs' actions in resolving the impasse. "It was very courageous of her to make this decision that forced this board to act," she said.
Jeff Kosowsky, the father of the Massachusetts team's co-captain, said Thursday that he learned of Downs' decision late Wednesday night. "It was literally a storybook ending," he said. "We were about to think, 'It's all over; time is about to run out,' when we received an e-mail notifying us of the judge's decision."
Kosowsky said that the controversy over whether or not his son's team would be allowed to participate fully in the competition "was not a conflict we had any desire to enter into. The sooner it's over, the sooner it's resolved, the sooner the wounds are healed, the better for everybody. ... The one thing I would not want to come from this is any divisions or hard feelings. The important thing is that the kids have the opportunity to compete. We are all guests of the Atlanta community, and we certainly don't want to leave behind any ill feelings."
But Kosowsky said that the board still needs to change its policy of continuing to hold the national championships over a Friday and Saturday while barring teams that may have conflicting religious observances from full participation. The national board was confronted with the same issue at the 2005 national championships in North Carolina when the New Jersey state champions from the Orthodox Torah Academy of Bergen County protested the Saturday schedule. The national mock trial board was unwilling to change the schedule in 2005, but the North Carolina trial lawyers' association, host to the event, summarily rearranged the schedule. Stung by the North Carolina lawyers' override of the mock trial board's authority, the group later voted never again to make any accommodation for religious reasons.
Despite the board's similar forced capitulation in Georgia, the question remains open as to what it may do in the future.
"I would think after this having happened twice and been disruptive to the very event they are trying to promote, they would realize they should have a more productive and collaborative way to deal with this situation and to accommodate religious observance," Kosowsky observed.
"The best thing would be for them to step back and resolve it themselves," he said. But if national board members insist on adhering to a no-accommodation policy "and dig their heels in even further," Kosowsky continued, "then we all have a duty to respond and show we didn't just do it for our own children, but we did it because it was the best thing, not just for now but for the future."
While I am happy for the result, it seems to me that the path that was taken to get to this point was heavy handed, confrontational, and in the end might lead to negative feelings about Jews and the Orthodox community that are the exact opposite of what the ADL is trying to accomplish.
When I attended Yeshiva University, the varsity team I was on competed in the NCAA regional championships. The men's competition was held on Sunday in order to accommodate us, but it had not always been so. The coach had told us that when he first joined the staff, the championships were held on Saturdays, and as a result his students could not participate. After qualifying but not competing, he appealed behind the scenes to his fellow coaches and NCAA officials and was able to convince them to make the change.
It might have been better for the school as well as for us as a community to forfeit this year due to the Shabbos and compete in only those competitions that did not conflict with Shabbos, if any exist. Then behind the scenes, Maimo and others could have tried to convince the powers that be that without a state champion from MA, and a powerhouse school like Maimo, the Mock Trial Champion this year is no true champion since they did not truly face all comers.
What is the likelihood that Maimo will win this subjective competition after strong arming their way in? If by some miracle they do win it all, will such a victory not be tainted by suspicions that they cowed the judges into favoring them after the ADL got brought the power of the Federal and State Judicial systems down on this tourney?
There is value in teaching our students that despite trying to be full participants in the broader world around us, sometimes there are values such as Shabbos that are bigger than all the worldly accolades that a secular pursuit might bring. It is important as an observant Jew to taste such disappointment, and yet come to an appreciation that our faith is more important, even when it is inconvenient.
The ability to participate fully is something to be savored, but there is a value to the process used to get there as much as to the end result.
Shimon: It is the facts that determine whether the situation warrants a fight or not. I don't know the facts of your NCAA situation but I am intimately familiar with what happened with mock trial so allow me to educate you as to why there was a need to confront.
1. It was the New Jersey bar not any Orthodox person or institution who first raised the issue of an accommodation to the natioal mock trial schedule. That took place in 1999 when TABC placed third in the state and several Jewish schools were competitive. Mock trial said emphatically no.
2. For the next six years, it become increasingly clear that Jewish schools would be competitive. During this period of time I believe New York determined not to compete nationally because of the scheduling issue.
3. In 2005, TABC won the New Jersey state championship. It asked for a reasonable minimal accommodation. Move two of the over 150 trials from Saturday to Thursday night/Friday. Mock trial refused.
4. But when the North Carolina Trial Lawyers (who ran the event that year) learned that the request was rejected, it insisted that the decision be reversed. That's why the accommodation came about in 2005.
5. Even before the competition took place in May 2005, the National High School Mock Trial Championship held its state coordinators' meeting and resolved "never again" to accommodate Saturday Sabbath observers.
6. After the competition took place, detailed analyses and studies were performed of the accommodation. They showed that the accommodation to TABC did not affect the competition and that the inclusion of the Orthodox Jewish student and the issues that the organization confronted was a valuable educational experience for all involved.
7. Efforts were made to get NHSMTC to acknowledge the studies and their findings but mock trial refused to budge.
8. As a consequence, both New Jersey and North Carolina withdrew from the NHSMTC and created an alternative competition that was meant to accommodate Sabbath observers (it's held during the week) UNTIL SUCH TIME as the NHSMTC policy is changed.
9. On May 11, 2006, the Congress of the United States wrote a letter to NHSMTC asking it to reverse its policy. NHSMTC did not respond to the congressional concerns.
10. On September 25, 2007, congress adopted House Resolution 25 calling on NHSMTC to reverse its policy;
11. When Maimonides won the Massachusetts state competition on March 27, 2009, it requested through the Massaschusetts state bar that a similar accommodation be provided as had been provided to TABC. The NHSMTC rejected that request citing its policy never again to accommodate.
12. That is the background under which this controversy occurred. It was not an unconsidered knee jerk decision to fight. But the prevailing view that won out among parents, alumni, advisers, former board members of the NHSMTC, the New Jersey bar, the North Carolina Trial lawyers and extremely respected counsel was that there had to be a fight.
Of course, by assuming an observant lifestyle, we understand and accpet limitations. But we also live in the greatest country in the world that is sensitive and accommodating to our needs (where appropriate). All good people from all walks of life understand and value that as the benefits of being an American citizen. Had we adopted the fear mentality you advocate, observant Jews would not have been admitted to college because reasonable accommodations would not have been made so that they could take entrance test on Sunday instead of Saturday. Most people believe that where possible, reasonable accommodations should be made and we are all better for it.
Being part of and loving this great country does not have to in any way diminish one's committment to faith and observance.
Mock trial team wins merely by competing
By Eric Fingerhut · May 12, 2009
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The record book will say that the Maimonides School finished 20th out of 40 teams at the National High School Mock Trial Championship in Atlanta, winning two trials and losing two.
But that doesn't include the team's huge victory even before last weekend's competition had started allowing the suburban Boston Jewish day school just to participate.
After repeatedly rejecting requests to alter the tournament schedule so the Maimonides team would not have to compete on Shabbat, tournament officials were finally forced to relent less than two days before the competition began thanks to a small group of determined activists working 20 hours a day over the past few weeks -- as well as a Maimonides team that was prepared to forfeit its chance at a championship rather than compromise its beliefs.
“You always wonder what's going to happen if religiousness gets in the way” of something you want to do, said team co-captain Michael Kosowsky, 17. But “we weren't talking at all about violating Shabbat. We were pretty strong in our principles.”
“This educates the public,” said fellow co-captain Leah Sarna, 17. “Shabbat is not at all voluntary and not something you can compromise on.”
The 27-member Maimonides team, of which eight competed last weekend, learned about the Shabbat conflict in early April, not long after it won the Massachusetts state mock trial championship qualifying them for the national event.
Maimonides hoped that instead of having to compete in the customary two trials on Friday and two trials on Saturday, the mock trial organization would make an exception for the school and move its Saturday trials to Thursday, when all the competitors already are in attendance and practicing at the competition site, or add additional trials for Maimonides on Friday.
The organization argued that altering the schedule affected the fairness of the competition because matchups in later rounds are determined by the results from earlier rounds. The results, its officials said, cannot be utilized properly if Maimonides is participating in its fourth trial while nearly all the other squads have participated in only two.
There was precedent for the request: In 2005, the local sponsoring organization for the competition, the North Carolina Trial Lawyers Association, made a similar rescheduling to accommodate a New Jersey Jewish day school, the Torah Academy of Bergen County. Pressured by the lawyers' group, the mock trial organization acquiesced after initially refusing the request, then passed a resolution saying it would not allow similar accommodations for Sabbath observers in the future.
As a result of that decision, the New Jersey and North Carolina mock trial groups resigned from the national organization and formed their own group that does not hold competitions on Shabbat.
So Jeff Kosowsky, Michael's father, and Daniel Edelman, a Maimonides alumnus who was familiar with the issue because his wife is an English teacher at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, enlisted Washington lawyers Nathan and Alyza Lewin, who specialize in religious discrimination cases.
Working pro bono, the Lewins got the Justice Department to issue a letter to the administrator of the Georgia courts, warning that entities that receive federal funds cannot administer programs which discriminate on the basis of religion. The competition was scheduled to be held in the Fulton County Courthouse, which receives federal funds.
The Lewins, Kosowsky and Edelman also tried to convince the local host sponsor, the Georgia Bar Association, to take action, but the assocation said that while it was sympathetic, claimed its contract with the national mock trial organization tied its hands.
The Maimonides' backers also alerted the media, with articles appearing on the situation in a major Atlanta legal publication and The New York Times.
It worked.
On May 6, after one member of the Georgia Bar had resigned in protest, Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Doris Downs told event organizers that they would not be able to use the Fulton County Courthouse for the competition unless they made accommodations for the Maimonides team. The organizers then decided to schedule a Thursday trial and three Friday trials for the Bostonians.
Michael Kosowsky said the three trials on Friday were “a little tiring,” but the team was pleased where it finished, considering it was its first trip to the national championship.
The schedule change was popular among the other teams in Atlanta, as well.
Michael Kosowsky said that on the day the Maimonides team arrived, a number of competitors noticed their kipot and told them, “We're really hopeful you get the accommodations.”
The other teams were “very, very supportive,” Sarna said. “It really meant a lot to us.”
Both said it made perfect sense that their fellow mock trial competitors would be so interested in their plight.
“It's a competition about the legal system,” Sarna said. “They're the type of people who would care about this.”
Those involved in the mock trial effort say they hope that the mock trial organization will make a permanent Shabbat accommodation policy, either by changing the days of the week that the tournament is held or, minimally, having a rescheduling option when Sabbath observers -- Jewish or Muslim -- qualify for the competition.
The mock trial group doesn't appear ready to change: On its Web site, the 20th-place finish of Maimonides is accompanied by an asterisk that notes the team's “deviation from typical team advancement.”
A School's Historic Kiddush HashemMore
By Nathan Lewin
Jewish Press May 13 2009
On March 27, before a huge crowd in Boston's historic Faneuil Hall, the mock trial team of Boston's Maimonides School won the championship for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and became eligible to compete in the national competition scheduled for Atlanta on May 8 and 9.
So begins a saga that has many lessons from Megillat Esther.
Here was the rub. May 9 is Saturday, and the National High School Mock Trial Competition (NHSMTC) has traditionally been held on Friday and Saturday. Through the Massachusetts coordinator, Maimonides requested an accommodation for Sabbath-observance but was rejected because NHSMTC had ratified a policy four years earlier not to accommodate Saturday Sabbath observers.
In 2005, the New Jersey statewide competition champion was the Torah Academy of Bergen County, another Modern Orthodox yeshiva. Finals were to be held in 2005 in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday and Saturday, May 6 and 7. The usual schedule for the mock-trial finals calls for each team to do two mock trials on Friday and two on Saturday. These are scored confidentially by panels of three judges.
After the four qualifying rounds, the results are announced, and the two top teams face each other in a championship match held on Saturday afternoon. The Torah Academy requested only that its two Saturday rounds be moved to Thursday and Friday.
The request was initially rejected. But NHSMTC contracts with the host state's bar association to administer the competition, including arranging courtrooms, selecting judges and scoring panels, and creating case materials. That year the North Carolina Trial Lawyers' Association ran the event, and when its head, Richard Taylor, learned of the refusal to accommodate, he unilaterally ordered that the trials be rescheduled to respect the team's Sabbath observance.
Although no one filed any protest over the rescheduling, and the teams from across the country expressed their respect for the New Jersey Sabbath observers with whom they interacted over Shabbat at the hotel, NHSMTC resolved never again to make accommodations.
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Judge George H. Carley Sr. - a Georgia Supreme Court judge and very influential on the NHSMTC board - argued that accommodation would be impossible for an "Islamic team" that wouldn't participate on Friday.
When the NHSMTC board thereafter formally adopted a no-accommodations resolution, North Carolina and New Jersey took principled stands by withdrawing from NHSMTC. And New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman won unanimous passage of a House of Representatives resolution calling on NHSMTC "to accommodate students of all religious faiths."
When Maimonides was crowned the Massachusetts title-holder in 2009, NHSMTC graciously responded that the Maimonides team would be "accommodated" by being permitted to compete in two trials on Friday and then forfeiting its two Saturday trials.
A captain of the Maimonides team was Michael Kosowsky, son of Maimonides graduate Jeffrey ("Jeff") and Miriam Kosowsky, herself a former prosecutor and assistant coach of the Maimonides team. Other captains were Leah Sarna, daughter of professors Jonathan Sarna and Ruth Langer, and Harry Chiel, son of Jonathan and Judy Chiel. The Kosowskys had a bat mitzvah of their daughter Avigayil scheduled for May 9, and the family's attention was divided. Michael was needed in Atlanta, and while his mother prepared for the family simcha, his father took on the task of pressing for an accommodation like the one NHSMTC had made in 2005.
Jeff Kosowsky urged the Maimonides leadership to challenge NHSMTC's refusal to reschedule Maimonides' Saturday trials and to move aggressively for an adjustment of the trial schedule so that the school's team could participate fully and have a chance to become national champions. He was encouraged by his friend Daniel ("Danny") Edelman, a graduate of Maimonides and Princeton who is now a New York partner at Crowell & Moring, a nationally renowned law firm.
Danny's wife, Nancy, is a teacher at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, and in 2005 he had participated in the successful effort to secure a religious accommodation for the New Jersey champions. On April 14 - less than a month before the scheduled Atlanta finals - Danny called on his former Princeton classmate Alyza Lewin, my daughter and law partner, who had spent one year at Maimonides when I was a visiting professor from practice at Harvard Law School.
The Maimonides leadership was skeptical about the prospects for success if an all-out battle was undertaken with NHSMTC. Nonetheless, Jeff and Danny got word of the rejection by NHSMTC to the Anti-Defamation League. Deborah M. Lauter, its national director of civil rights who had served as director of ADL's Southeast Regional Office in Atlanta, promptly sent a letter to John Wheeler, NHSMTC chair, protesting the refusal to accommodate.
Wheeler's response to the ADL, dated April 20, was as inflexible as one could imagine. He defended the competition's being held over a weekend rather than in the middle of the week, even though the ADL request had sought only to reschedule two of more than 150 scheduled trials.
I first learned of the controversy from Alyza and Danny Edelman on April 19, 2009, and my own feeling - communicated within a day to the Maimonides leadership when it called me - was that the directive given by Mordechai to Queen Esther applied to this situation: "U'mi yodea im l'et ka'zot higa'at l'malchut?"
The Maimonides team had, I thought, been privileged to win the Massachusetts championship in order to strike a public blow for Sabbath observance.
I felt strongly - contrary to some opinions expressed among Maimonides personnel who were reluctant to press the issue further - that it was important to continue the battle, and that winning it would be a Kiddush Hashem.
My legal strategy was two-pronged. First, I suggested filing a complaint with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice and specifically with the special counsel for religious discrimination, Eric Treene. These kinds of complaints can lead to governmental investigations, to lawsuits filed by the United States, or to friend-of-the-court filings in individual cases.
My second prong was the threat of a civil lawsuit. Federal law provides in Section 1983 of Title 42 of the United States Code for a civil remedy whenever there is a violation of a federal constitutional right, and I believed NHSMTC's involvement of the local court systems and bar associations turned its activities into "state action" subject to constitutional limitations.
Our complaint letter went to the Justice Department on April 22, 11 business days before the critical May 8-9 weekend, with a copy to Wheeler. The letter threatening a federal lawsuit was withheld while Alyza, Danny, and Jeff galvanized public opinion and made around-the-clock efforts to bring the very sympathetic case of the Maimonides team to public attention in the media.
The Maimonides leadership asked me whether I would be working pro bono publico. I replied in an e-mail that I did this kind of work leshem shamayim, and not for fees. I also told them the lesson I thought should be learned from Mordechai's warning to his niece Esther: "Im hacharesh tacharishi ba'et ha'zot" - Esther was not permitted to remain silent but was obliged, as the Midrash tells us, to become the sanegor (defense attorney) for Klal Yisrael. It was my duty to fight this battle to what I believed would be its successful conclusion.
The total number of e-mails sent or received between April 14 and May 8 on this project exceeds 6,500. Many were written between midnight and 6 a.m. - proof that "all-nighters" were spent on this effort. Alyza wrote and received e-mail messages on the mock-trial issues even while waiting in a hospital with two of her children.
Jeff, Danny, and Alyza enlisted the support of political leaders in Massachusetts and Georgia, as well as high-profile congressmen. They made media contacts and dealt directly with respected lawyers in the Georgia Bar. Together with Richard Nagel, who had been on the NHSMTC board and left it when it voted against religious accommodation, Jeff analyzed the "power-matching" scoring system used in the mock trials and demonstrated its statistical flaws. The group drafted an impressive packet of "talking points" and supporting documentation that they distributed widely.
They also contacted Jewish leaders in Atlanta. Rabbi Michael Broyde of the Young Israel of Toco Hills and a professor of law at Emory University wrote a compelling letter to NHSMTC urging that American values required accommodation to all segments of American society. Rabbi Yossi New, a longtime Chabad rabbi in Atlanta, with whom I had worked about 15 years ago when we succeeded in litigation to display a Chabad Chanukah menorah in the rotunda of the State Capitol in Atlanta (winning that case by an 11-to-0 vote in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit) introduced us to Rabbi Alvin Sugarman, a Reform rabbi who conveyed to leading non-Orthodox lawyers and other public figures in Atlanta his strong outrage over the NHSMTC decision.
On the afternoon of Friday, May 1 (after we sent Wheeler our "demand letter") we learned that a letter had been sent by the Department of Justice to the Georgia court system telling the judges that, as beneficiaries of federal money, the Georgia courts may not participate in conduct that effectively discriminates on the basis of religion without jeopardizing their right to federal funding under the "Safe Streets Act of 1968." The four of us welcomed Shabbat that evening thinking that this was the death-knell of NHSMTC's discriminatory policy.
But our adversaries yielded no ground. The Georgia State Bar controlled the competition in Atlanta and had the power to implement the requested accommodation regardless of NHSMTC wishes (as the North Carolina Bar had done in 2005). Nonetheless, the president of the Georgia Bar published an open letter in Atlanta's daily legal newspaper claiming he opposed the NHSMTC position but that the Bar's contract with NHSMTC required it to abide by the organization's rules. The contract, he said, had no "wiggle room" and prescribed huge liquidated damages for any breach.
This view had already been communicated to Alyza in a long, frustrating conversation she had with the Bar's general counsel, William Smith (who, Alyza discovered later, is called "Doctor No" by cognoscenti of the Georgia Bar). Alyza had called Smith's attention to the contract provision that prescribed a $50,000 penalty only if the Bar withdrew completely from hosting the competition, not if it unilaterally changed one of NHSMTC's "rules."
I wrote a public response to the Bar president's letter that reminded the Georgia Bar of the timidity it showed in 1960 when Dr. Martin Luther King and 75 students began sit-ins in Atlanta stores that had been closed to blacks. By hiding behind a contract term which, the Bar president professed, he personally opposed, the Georgia Bar was repeating the error it committed in 1960 when it cited trespass laws as preventing support of the civil rights protesters. The Bar could readily have interpreted the contract as not penalizing the same schedule change that the North Carolina Bar had courageously implemented in 2005.
In a letter of May 6 to John Wheeler, I noted he had claimed that only 7 of 43 teams had volunteered in 2005 to compete against the Torah Academy in an "early round" and, at the same time, argued that competing in an "early round" gave the team a "competitive advantage."
If so, I asked, why did not all the teams in 2005 seek to participate in the Thursday afternoon specially scheduled trial arranged for the Torah Academy team? I ended with "your continued refusal to permit the Maimonides students to participate fully in the competition will subject you to an action for damages and attorneys' fees under federal law. I hope you do not make such legal action necessary."
* * *
As May 8 approached we were getting national news coverage of the issue, but the outlook appeared grim. One of Rabbi New's recommendations, Jodi Fleisig, contacted Channel 2 news in Atlanta. It did a very sympathetic story on the evening of May 4 and Fox News broadcast the photogenic and well-spoken nine members of the Maimonides team after they arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday, May 6. On the same day The New York Times ran a favorable story with a large photograph of the team celebrating its Massachusetts victory.
Then, when things looked most gloomy, at about 9:30 on Wednesday night, May 6, Alyza was returning from a speech she had given in Teaneck, New Jersey to a meeting of the Rabbinical Council of America, where she had hoped to be able to announce we had won a battle against religious intolerance. Danny, who had just seen her off after she visited with him, was discussing the endgame with Jeff. Suddenly, "v'nahafoch hu m'yagon l'simcha u'm'eivel l'yom tov." Our sadness turned to great joy.
We were told that an accommodation would be made because of a decision by Chief Judge Doris ("Dee") Downs of the Fulton County Superior Court. She learned of the discriminatory policy and of the Justice Department's letter, and she did what the Georgia Bar had been unwilling to do. She arranged a conference call that evening with John Wheeler and with Judge Carley and told them that unless an accommodation was made for the Maimonides team, the courthouse and its courtrooms - which were being vacated on Friday and Saturday so that the mock trials could be held there - would be closed to the competition.
Wheeler saw this left him no choice. In an unapologetic public statement, he announced that under the compulsion of the Fulton County court, NHSMTC would conduct special mock-trial sessions for the Maimonides team on Thursday, May 8, and have a third round for them on Friday, May 9. Maimonides ultimately placed 20th out of 41 teams, a respectable finish for a first-time national competitor.
The Maimonides team left the courthouse on Friday to make the nine-mile trip to the Young Israel of Toco Hills. They were treated as visiting heroes there and in a neighboring Orthodox shul. That Shabbat, at his daughter's bat mitzvah celebration, Jeff was told that Maimonides' achievement was being spread by word of mouth in New York's Modern Orthodox world, that it was the kind of Kiddush Hashem that occurs "only a couple of times in a lifetime," and that it will be spoken of and taught in yeshivas as an illustration of how Orthodox Jews should stand up for their rights.
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